Peek inside the chronically damaged brain of an NFL player

Now that football is back on, it’s time again for discussion about football injuries – particularly concussions, too many of which can destroy a player’s life. And destroy it not too long after his gridiron glory days.

Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu is one of around 400 living athletes who have decided to donate their brains after death to what has become known as the “NFL brain bank,” The Guardian reports. At Boston’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, as it’s officially known, scientists look into the effects repeated head-bashing has on the brain.

In the video below (not for the squeamish), the center’s Dr. Ann McKee slices through the preserved brain of a deceased, “very skilled NFL player, very well known,” she told The Guardian. She points out distinctive brain damage that’s characteristic of her medical specialty: chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

The dramatic brain damage is not much different from that of Dave Duerson, the star defensive back who led the 1985 Bears and the 1990 Giants to Super Bowl victories. He shot himself in the heart in February, after leaving a request to donate his brain to the NFL “bank.”

For a long time, everything Duerson touched turned to gold. On top of his two Super Bowls, he was declared NFL Man of the Year in 1987 and NFL Humanitarian of the Year the following year.

After he retired from the game in 1993 the successes continued. He refreshed his economics degree with a business course at Harvard and entered the food business, purchasing three McDonald’s franchises in Louisville, Kentucky, before setting up his own business, Duerson Foods, supplying sausages to chains.

When times were good, they were very good. They owned a house in Highland Park, a leafy town on the shore of Lake Michigan north of Chicago. They travelled the world, flying Concorde.

But from around 2005, almost a decade after he had given up football, their fortunes started to turn. It was such a slow process, like watching a child grow, that Alicia hardly noticed at first. It started with Duerson making bad business calls in a way that was unlike him.